SHANGHAI 

SKETCHES 

JANE SHAW WARD 





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Shanghai Sketches 

By JANE SHAW WARD 

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Secretary to China 



THE WOMANS PRESS 
600 Lexington Avenue, New York 
1917 




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Copyright, December. 1917. by 

National Board of the Young Women’s Christian Associations 
of the United States of America 


©CU479929 






JAN -9 1918 
















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“This is the Way a Lady Rides!” 
As She Goes to Language School 



“I Don’t See How They Know Each Other Apart!” 
But What Would They Say of a Group of You? 





CHAPTER I 


LOCAL COLOR 

E have crossed the blue Pacific. We have 
spent a few golden days in Japan, days when 
we could hardly believe it was all true, so 
like was it—from the rickshas and the rice 
fields to the kimono’d ladies and the butterfly, bright¬ 
eyed babies—to the pictures we’d seen and never quite 
believed. 

A group of fellow workers to be, a few familiar faces 
among them, greet us at the dock. Before us on the 
Bund, or water front, are large ‘ ‘ foreign-looking ’ ’ build¬ 
ings—but remember that ‘ ‘ foreign, ’ ’ in China, means 
us! Automobiles and street cars rumble by, and out on 
the water we see the Stars and Stripes fluttering gaily 
from the masts of our two gleaming white United States 
gunboats. We’re not so far from home as we thought. 

But when our friends, with a few ridiculous sounding 
murmurs, turn over our baggage to their Chinese man 
servant, “Boy” he is called, be he young or old, and he 
answers in sounds that make us remember the softly 
hissing steam radiator at home, we realize that it is 
China, after all. 

In light, swift, rubber-tired rickshas we ride through 
the busy streets of Shanghai’s foreign concession. Never 
again, wherever we go, shall we set out afoot, on a sloppy, 



5 








slushy day, or a cold, slippery night, without longing for 
a Shanghai ricksha and ricksha man to take us quickly 
and dryly to our destination. When we step down, a 
bit uncertainly, from our high seat, and see the men 
paid in large dragon-imprinted coppers, w T e feel that we 
are indeed in China. 

Our seniors allow us only a glimpse of Shanghai, for 
they know how precious is every week of language study. 
So a few days later we go to the small mission station 
in an inland city, where there will be fewer interrup¬ 
tions, more time for quiet study, and a gradual getting 
into touch with Chinese life. 

We begin our real life in China in the big, comfortable 
home of an American missionary family. A tennis 
court, green lawns, and great palms waving against the 
high, white walls of the mission enclosure give a very 
restful feeling. We are members of a little group of 
busy, interested workers, men and women, who share 
their playtime with us, and gradually, as soon as we are 
able, let us share a bit in the work too. 

The language? Hard—yes, woefully hard, tongue 
twisting, throat catching, lung stretching, but absorb¬ 
ingly interesting. To pronounce a while, to read a bit, 
to write a few characters, and then to try to converse— 
it makes as wide and fascinating a variety as anyone 
could want for a year’s study. And then, one day, to 
find that it works, to ask the boy for hot water and have 
him bring hot water—that gives a thrill we shall not 
soon forget! 

With our study of Chinese goes an elective course on 
China. We meet a group of Chinese teachers from the 


6 


girls’ school across the way; they are interesting, 
vivacious, full of fun, as they meet to read English 
together once a week, and speak English, too, slowly but 
well (shall we ever get an equal knowledge of their lan¬ 
guage !) when they realize we really cannot understand 
Chinese. One plays the piano beautifully; another is 
a born kindergartner; and without them the school could 
not go on with the work it is doing. 

Later we visit this school and try out on the girls the 
language we have learned. They gather around, and 
strive to understand us and make us understand them. 
They are very like any other school girls, though I don’t 
know whether in our school days we would have shown 
the same polite courtesy and grave-faced interest to a 
foreigner struggling absurdly w r ith our speech. 

We go to church too, regularly. What a triumph 
when we “get” a sentence, or can read a whole line of 
a hymn, or can learn the Sunday school “golden text” 
to repeat to our teacher the next day! 

A visit to a mission hospital shows us another un¬ 
guessed, inexpressible need, and as soon as we can under¬ 
stand even a little, we visit, with one of the workers, 
some of the Chinese homes. 

During these months at “language” we have learned 
many things not listed on our course of study. We soon 
realize that too much emphasis has been laid on China’s 
“oppositeness.” True, she is opposite us in space. 
Look at your watch. China’s time is thirteen hours 
ahead of United States eastern time. If you read this 
at eight on Monday night, China has already reached 
nine on Tuesday morning—not behind, but ahead of us, 


7 


after all! And we find that she leads in other things 
besides the calendar day. 

We have heard, too, that China’s customs are different. 
Some of them are. We shake our heads for “No”; they 
make a quick motion of the hand, raised palm out, and 
a more decisive negative it would be hard to picture. 
We say, “Come here,” and beckon w T ith fingers raised 
upward; they reverse the hand, and beckon with the 
fingers toward the earth—and, after all, we do walk, not 
through the air but, as the Chinese gesture indicates, 
along the ground! We can find countless differences and 
a reasonable explanation for many of them. They are, 
however, superficial, after all. 

But, you may say, how can you ever feel at home with 
a people whose faces are “all alike.” Will you reverse 
the picture a moment? Into a gathering of American 
girls or women we have invited a Chinese woman, one 
not accustomed to our ‘ 4 foreign ’ ’ faces. After the meet¬ 
ing she is telling her sister about it. “Their hats and 
hair were somewhat different,” she says, “and their 
clothes were very fussy and many-colored and bar¬ 
baric—but their faces looked all alike ! I don’t see how 
they knew each other apart.” Yes, that is the impres¬ 
sion we should make. Our features look pointed and 
prominent, not at all in accordance with their principles 
of true facial beauty. Our light eyes have a fierce, 
unnatural look; and our golden-haired friend will be 
grouped with the very old ladies, and honored accord¬ 
ingly, for is not her hair white!—a queer white, indeed, 
a foreign style doubtless, but white. Indeed, if any race 
is queer, is it not ours? Most of the people of the world, 


8 


of Asia, Africa, South America and the original inhabi¬ 
tants of our own land, are dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark- 
skinned, and, after all, what is color of eyes or skin or 
hair? Our Chinese friend will soon waive the fact of 
our queerness of appearance, and meet us and make 
friends with us as folks; and soon it is very easy for us, 
too, to see with new eyes the faces of these people as 
different, as individual, as personal, in spite of their 
racial similarity, as are the faces of our own friends here 
at home. 

But we have learned more than to distinguish faces, 
during these weeks. We have come to a closer view of 
some of China’s needs. We have seen something of the 
evil customs, of the poverty, of the power of superstition 
and ignorance and sin—for these things are all around 
us, appallingly evident. 

On the brighter side, w r e have met, perhaps, Chinese 
men and women, not Christians, who showed an in¬ 
tegrity, a keenness of intellect, that made us realize the 
original strength and capacity of character which can 
so develop among all the deteriorating influences that 
crowd around Chinese life. We have, moreover, come 
to know the personalities, as well as the features, of some 
of the Christian Chinese workers here in the compound, 
and have seen the quiet strength of character and true¬ 
ness of living, that makes us more and more glad at heart 
that our place is among a people of such splendid 
potentialities. 

Then one day we hear that we have been called hack 
to work. We know all too little language. But one 
worker is going to America, the other must have help or 


9 


the work will be sadly cut down, and we are to fill in, 
giving half time to work and half to study. 

Regretfully we take a last walk down the main street. 
I wish you could all see it with us. 

First, we go to the far end, to finish the purchase of 
some curios we have long wanted. Buying is slow, for 
we must bargain, and in Chinese at that! This is hard 
on the shopkeeper, who must understand us or lose the 
sale. But it is good for our language and courage! 

Now we’ll go slowly back. What a street it is! When 
we first came, we thought it was an alley, reaching to 
some real street. It is ten or fifteen feet wide, roughly 
cobbled, and lined the whole length with shops, open all 
across the front, like stalls. The roadway is crowded 
from end to end. Dogs, chickens and children share the 
lower levels. Over and around them, with almost uni¬ 
versal care and kindliness, goes the crowd. A coolie 
trots along carrying on the ends of a bamboo pole, across 
his shoulders, two great pails of water. A tea-house boy 
passes, balancing on his head trays three deep, contain¬ 
ing a feast for some wedding or festival. (One is re¬ 
minded of Pharaoh’s baker!) 

Here in this shop we are passing is a tinsmith. If 
you will show him a model or picture, he will make you 
anything in his line, usually out of a Standard Oil can. 
A mender of idols comes next, and after him a dealer 
in curios. Beyond, an old country woman squats on the 
edge of the already too narrow road, selling horned 
beans, fifteen for a cent, and next to her a dyer is using 
a generous third of the street to stretch and dry his 
newly dyed blue cotton cloth! 


10 


A cry ahead warns you that a sedan chair is coming. 
As the bearers trot by, you may catch a glimpse within 
of a brawny military official, or of a thin, scholarly look¬ 
ing gentleman, or of a high-class woman on her way to 
pay a ceremonial visit to some friend, or to worship in 
a temple further dowm. 

Here stroll a couple of country women walking single 
file, and conversing casually in a shout that can be heard 
even above the noise around. In this shop with the 
stylish glass front you may get “foreign” goods 1 — 
colored china figurines, mirrors decorated with forget- 
me-nots, tea cups of heavy white china, with 4 4 Souvenir ’ ’ 
painted on them in gold letters, celluloid combs and 
brushes, and a varied collection of cheap soaps, cos¬ 
metics and face powders. The Chinese taste, unerring 
in things Chinese, loses its way completely among our 
western productions. As we Americans are likely to 
choose, for our treasured party hag, a piece of Chinese 
embroidery that to them is coarse and badly colored, so 
they choose as their best bit of china ware a regrettably 
ugly “foreign” cup and saucer. 

Beyond this open space is the temple. Again, as so 
often in Oriental China, we are reminded of what we 
have read of Palestine, that other Oriental land; the 
court is crowded with noisy bargainers—buyers and 
sellers of trinkets, a strolling singer, a sweetmeat 
vender. Here and there, pushing through the crowd, 
a stolid or an anxious faced worshipper comes to burn a 
bit of incense, offer some paper money, or inquire of the 
priest by an elaborate system of chance, what shall be 
the ending of a sore sickness at home. 


11 


As we pass on a beggar meets us, wretched, thin, sick- 
looking, insistent. Shall we give a little, as we long to 
do, though we know it will probably go to the already 
too prosperous beggar king, or shall we refuse his seem¬ 
ingly so piteous need! It’s a problem not yet finally 
settled for some of us. 

But here we are at the gate of the mission enclosure. 
We pass in, and what a contrast it is! Not long ago this, 
too, was covered with crowded shops backed with rice 
fields. Now before us is a glimpse of green lawn. On 
the left, in the church, a group of Chinese men are 
earnestly discussing some problem or new plan. On the 
right sounds the hum and buzz (louder than our western 
ears are used to) of a boys’ day school. Across the wall 
we hear voices of school girls at play, and through the 
open window of the Bible women’s school just behind, 
we hear the wheezy notes of the tiny collapsible organ, 
as one of the Bible women practices the tune of “Oh, 
Happy Day!” 

In these months we have entered into the life of the 
compound. We have seen the difference between the 
Christians and the others—in their faces, in their con¬ 
ceptions of what living is, and in their lives, often so 
full of sacrifice and real service. 

As we have seen something of the wide reach and 
powerful influence of Christianity in all these lives, we 
have come to realize what mission work means in China, 
and we are glad and eager to go forth to take up our 
small half-time share in it all. 


12 


CHAPTER II 


WHERE “WOMAN’S PLAGE IS 
IN THE HOME” 

0 WAD AYS, before a new piece of work is 
undertaken, it is the thing to make a survey 
of the field. Suppose, then, we make a sur¬ 
vey of our field of work, surely not a limited 
one,—no less that The Women of China! 

If one wishes to find out the real life of a nation, the 
first place to go is to its homes. To know and understand 
a man in his inner life, to be able to comprehend his 
ideals, principles and prejudices, one must know some¬ 
thing of his home. And this is even more important for 
the understanding of a woman, for in the Orient a 
woman’s home life is, as a rule, her whole life. 

In this study, we shall go to the old-fashioned Chinese 
home. Much of this is changing. Among students, 
among Christians, and among the families that touch 
western life and ideas closely, we find many changes and 
improvements in the home life and the place of women. 
These are often accompanied in the minds of the more 
progressive young people by very dangerous miscon¬ 
ceptions and misinterpretations of our western customs, 
in regard to social freedom and the relations of the sexes. 

But even the most progressive of the present genera¬ 
tion have old China for their background. Moreover, 



13 










in a land like China such changes come slowly, so sup¬ 
pose we first study a Chinese home of the old type, 
realizing that even yet it is the prevailing type. 

Chinese home life, as we all know, is patriarchal. The 
son lives in his father’s house and always brings his bride 
there. Shall we follow the life of a Chinese girl from 
her babyhood to her marriage, and into her new home ? 

She is born into a big household. Mother, aunts, 
grandmother and, in a family of means, numbers of 
women servants share in caring for her, playing with 
her, and giving her often too lenient discipline. Her 
real discipline begins as she grows a bit older. In a 
very few cases she is given an education with her 
brothers and learns to write a correct letter, to recite 
the maxims of Confucius and sometimes to compose 
charming bits of poetry. Such cases are not as rare as 
we used to suppose, but they are negligible compared to 
the population as a whole. 

The girl whose life we are following belongs to a 
family of some wealth. They give her the very limited 
literary education usually considered proper for a 
woman of her class, and train her in household arts and 
duties. 

Meanwhile, her father is busy arranging an engage¬ 
ment for her. Go-betweens are seen, necromancers con¬ 
sulted, a proper dowry is arranged, and the father’s 
burden is beginning. His daughter, of course, must be 
married, there is no other course open or imaginable, 
for to be left a more or less unwelcome burden upon 
brothers or other relatives is a pitiful fate indeed! So 


14 


the engagement papers are exchanged, and both are 
considered bound. 

When she reaches a suitable age, a date is set for the 
wedding. Often preparations are begun six months or 
a year before the ceremonial day. As the time ap¬ 
proaches, the preparations require the combined energies 
of the bride and her whole family, for our western brides 
are not alone in coming to their wedding days tired, 
nervous and worn out. 

The presents are on view a few days before the wed¬ 
ding—a wonderful array! We shall see chests and cup¬ 
boards for the gifts and trousseau; dining table and 
dressing table sets of beautiful china, or of solid silver; 
Chinese furniture of rare woods, carved and polished by 
hand and covered, for today, with embroidered squares 
of scarlet satin. Very often, nowadays, the bride has 
the furniture for one living room made in foreign style. 
As a rule, this is not so handsome or so artistic in line 
and finish as her Chinese pieces, and yet the easy chairs 
and round center table, suggestive of an informal, liv¬ 
able family gathering place, may mean more in the new 
home than just a difference in style. 

There is the bride’s trousseau, too, plentiful and elabo¬ 
rate. There are embroidered silks and satins, soft sum¬ 
mer costumes, ceremonial garments, all very lovely in 
their Oriental way except where here and there a bit of 
western machine lace, or an edging of foreign-made 
beads and tinsel, is used as a finish to some lovely gown. 
In their eyes, however, such western trimmings are quite 
^up to date, and in a land where the lace is all made by 
hand, machine lace is rather recherche, and quite the 


15 


thing. In the usual trousseau, however, such mistakes 
are rare. There are wonderful bedquilts, too, thick and 
warm and downy, often silk-covered, an important part 
of the outfit. 

The wedding day comes. The family keeps open 
house, serving elaborate feasts to friends, relatives and 
neighbors. The bride appears in the wedding costume, 
the gift of the groom’s family, and takes part with him 
in the elaborate ceremonials that make up the old-time 
formalities. As a rule, in conservative families the bride 
and groom do not meet until the wedding. Throughout 
the affair the bride is overwhelmed with embarrassment. 
This shyness is quite genuine, and is also eminently 
correct, a bold debonaire bride being quite unheard of 
in old China. She walks with tightly folded hands and 
downcast eyes, and we doubt whether she has the cour¬ 
age to raise her eyes to her new husband’s face, even 
when she has the opportunity. Immediately after these 
ceremonials, however, she goes to his home. Before 
long, doubtless, each looks at the other with very real 
interest and curiosity. Let us hope they may find each 
other charming. 

After her marriage she becomes completely a member 
of the groom’s family. To his father and mother as well 
as to himself she owes implicit obedience, and it is to his 
ancestors, not to her own, that she will hereafter offer 
the incense and respect of a loyal daughter. Later, 
when we have studied a little of the power and meaning 
of ancestor-worship, we shall understand better the full 
force of this last statement. 

Every Chinese father knows that for each daughter 


16 


he must inevitably provide the dowry and wedding 
feast, the furniture and trousseau, and that in the end 
she will become an integral part of another family. No 
wonder that a girl is sometimes not as welcome at her 
birth as would have been the hoped-for son who would 
have shared in the father’s financial responsibilities, 
supported his parents in their old age, and after their 
death have worshipped and reverenced their spirits and 
those of their ancestors! 

The life to which a young girl goes as a bride is not 
an easy one. The house is large and crowded, and court¬ 
yards and rooms open into each other in long series 
with little or no privacy. The mother-in-law is abso¬ 
lutely head of the women of the household. She too had 
a hard time once, and the rubs of a long, monotonous and 
sometimes bitter life have not always softened and 
sweetened her spirit. Sometimes, indeed, she is a kindly 
mother to her new daughter. Often she is severe, dicta¬ 
torial, demanding, and she is usually conservative, with 
the inflexible stubbornness of the conservatism of age 
and “virtue” combined. For to her as a Chinese woman, 
custom is virtue, and failure in its observance is an 
exhibition not only of bad form, but also of bad morals. 

In this same house live also any unmarried daughters, 
the other sons and their wives and children, and often, 
when the men can afford such luxuries, the secondary 
wives and their children. The little bride will have 
companions a-plenty. But they have not been selected 
for any congeniality of taste or temperament, and the 
crowding, the idleness and the lack of privacy do not 
make for ideal relationships. On visiting such a home 


17 


we are often impressed with the natural kindness, 
adaptability and dignity of these women, who seem to 
remain on friendly terms and even to develop real 
affection for each other under these most trying cir¬ 
cumstances. 

In the poorer homes there is work to do, in the fields, 
on the farm, in the house. The men and women share 
in it all alike and there are few of the dangerous idle 
hours. 

But in the homes of wealth or even of moderate means, 
idleness is one of the greatest curses. Servants do all 
the work, even to caring for the children. The bride 
may cook a little, embroider, paint, or draw if she has 
the talent and training. She may pay and receive cere¬ 
monial visits, and will of course sit about with the other 
women in the family. But it is a life of oppressive idle¬ 
ness and monotony. Gambling, gossip, and in these 
modern days, theatre-going for the more emancipated, 
a group of women going together, break the monotony. 

Yet these are women of splendid capacities, warm¬ 
hearted, efficient, executive, keen thinkers and very 
practical. Many of them are intensely patriotic and 
long to help their country and its women. 

Of the religious beliefs, capacities and needs nothing 
is said here, as the subject requires a chapter to itself. 

What splendid womanhood this is, whose chance of 
self-expression in service and life is so small as compared 
with its capacities! Surely among these women of real 
and varied needs, of large leisure and of fine potentiali¬ 
ties, the Association will find a wide field for its 
activities. 


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She Rebelled Against Chinese Wedding Customs, One Occupation American and Chinese Women 

and Was Married in Good American Style Will Always Have in Common 









CHAPTER III 


THE HALF GODS GO 

HE religious life of China is exceedingly 
complex, and though many of the beliefs are 
low and the people “superstitious” to the 
last degree, yet we soon realize the very 
significant fact that the Chinese of the more educated 
classes are not the “degraded heathen” we used to 
imagine them to be. Some of their customs indicate a 
spirit of almost childish fear, exciting our wonder and 
even our ridicule, and yet by these externals we judge 
the people themselves. This is not fair, so suppose we 
reverse the picture and turn the light upon ourselves! 

How many who read these pages have a favorite super¬ 
stition, such as “knocking on wood,” as we boast a 
little, saying, “I haven’t had a cold this winter”? And 
in many a group of Americans will there not be one or 
two who would not sit down with thirteen at the table? 

Now, of course you and I do not intellectually admit 
that when we do a simple thing like that, which offends 
no law of the physical or spiritual world, we shall be 
punished for it; we are not really convinced that God 
will send grief or misfortune to one of thirteen because 
of that perfectly innocent act! And yet these things 
tend to prove themselves. In any group of twelve or 
fourteen, for instance, one of the number may meet with 



20 







some trouble before the year’s end, but it is only when 
there have been thirteen together that we look back and 
blame it on the ‘ 1 fatal number. ’ ’ 

Too many of us still hold to this superstition and 
others like it, though they are so totally out of harmony 
with our better thinking, and we should resent it indeed 
if a Chinese should return to his country, and, judging 
us by such things, represent us to his people as super¬ 
stitious and childish. Though we may seem to hold such 
superstitions we are, nevertheless, better intellectually 
and religiously than the ideas themselves! 

This is sure to be the case among a people whose 
science and philosophy admit, or at least do not contra¬ 
dict, their superstitions, and so, though the Chinese hold 
beliefs we cannot respect, yet we can respect the people 
who hold them! We find these people to be of finer 
intellectual power and of nobler convictions of life and 
morality than the‘ir beliefs would imply. 

We all know something of Confucius and his teaching. 
He laid down a fine code of ethics, and his negative 
Golden Rule, “Do not do to others what you would not 
have them do to you,” sets a high standard and repre¬ 
sents the real ethical value of his “words.” To his 
teachings is undoubtedly due a large share of the credit 
for the comparatively high ethical standards of the 
Chinese race today. 

But Confucius did not teach a “religion.” When 
asked about spirits and the future life, he replied with 
the questions, “Do you understand all about man and 
about the present life?” The inquirer must needs 
answer “No.” Then said Confucius, “Not under- 


21 


standing man, do not inquire about spirits; not knowing 
this life, seek not to know the next.” 

Many educated Chinese men and a smaller number of 
women accept the teachings of Confucius and are frank 
agnostics on all religious subjects. 

In his few sayings about women, Confucius is true to 
Oriental thinking. He admits that “Women, indeed, 
are human, but they are of a lower state than men and 
can never attain full equality with them. The aim of 
female education, therefore, is perfect submission, not 
culture and development.” Confucius’ words have 
carried unmeasured weight with the Chinese race 
through all these centuries. Had he taken a different 
attitude toward women it is hard even to imagine the 
good such teachings might have done! Of the great 
religious leaders, Jesus alone took a stand that gave to 
women and to men an equal respect and a like freedom 
of personal development. 

But no race continues its existence without some form 
of religious life. In China the forms are many and 
complex. 

Taoism (the following of the correct “way,” or 
“Tao”) adopted forms of Buddhism and Confucianism 
that include the complex system of ancestor worship. 
These three, mingled with countless local superstitions 
that are hard to classify at all, comprise the main forms 
of Chinese religious life. Mohammedanism, too, claims 
many followers in certain parts of China. 

It is extremely difficult clearly to distinguish these 
forms and their observances. Belief in the continued 
existence and frequent presence of the spirits of the 


22 


dead is closely connected with belief in other kinds of 
spirits. To the average Chinese, the world animate and 
inanimate is filled with spirits. These belong to two 
classes, the Yang and the Ying. With the Yang are 
identified the sun, light, warmth, goodness, and the male 
principle; to the Ying belong the moon, darkness, cold, 
evil, and the female principle. These spirits are every¬ 
where active, and countless observances, rules and 
formulas are used in the less educated families to gain 
the help of the Yang spirits, and avoid injury from the 
Ying spirits or “demons.” 

For instance, one of the fixed laws of the demon’s 
being is that it shall move in straight lines. An outside 
door facing an open space is obviously convenient to 
such spirits. Hence some ten feet in front of such a 
door is built a wall higher and wider than the door 
itself. The spirits coming toward the house strike this 
wall and are thus deflected. 

Any failure to observe the proper forms and rules of 
the “wind and water” spirits may bring bad luck. 
Sickness is from them. Sometimes the demon drives out 
another spirit from a sick person and takes possession 
himself. One may see a mother or father going through 
the streets calling to the spirit of a sick child to return. 
The caller will carry a garment of the invalid that the 
spirit may recognize it, and follow it hack. 

The result of such beliefs, which could be cited in¬ 
definitely, is that life is shadowed by a brooding, all- 
prevailing sense of uncertainty which easily develops 
into fear, and in the face of an individual tragedy or 
widespread calamity, grows into a spirit of utter terror. 


23 


Ancestor worship is founded on a truly admirable 
respect for the elders of a family, and even where this 
respect is deeply ingrained with superstitious practices, 
it holds a certain pathetic nobility and loyalty. 

All honor must he shown to elders in the weird regions 
of the spirit-world. A family will make offerings in¬ 
volving serious sacrifice and debt, in order to insure the 
comfort and happiness of a revered parent. This cere¬ 
monial observance is offered not only to parents alive, 
but to all ancestors, and in this all members of a family 
or a whole clan unite. Since when a daughter marries 
her worship must thereafter go to the ancestral shrine 
of her husband’s family, only a son can carry on his 
father’s line. Mencius, one of China’s great philoso¬ 
phers, said: “To be unfilial is the greatest sin. Three 
things are unfilial. Of these, the worst is to have no 
son. ’ ’ When a man has no son he usually adopts one, a 
member of his own family clan if possible, otherwise 
some outside lad. For if he die without male descend¬ 
ants, he himself will pass into a future life comfortless 
and unrevered, hearing with him the guilt of leaving his 
ancestors in a similar plight. 

This reverence for elders and ancestors carries with it 
an intense respect for custom and tradition, and a son 
must give absolute obedience to his father until the day 
of his death. The old man has become devoted to the 
observances and customs of lifelong habit, and before 
he dies the son has usually in his turn been moulded 
into a similarly conservative habit of thought. 

So the nation has for centuries looked to the golden 
age of the past, and has striven to observe its standards 


24 


and reproduce its life and manners as closely as possible. 
It is a fine testimony to the natural force and virility of 
Chinese character, and to the inherent virtue of their 
ideals, that they have managed to stand so nearly still 
and yet not go backward. 

The democracy of their class system probably accounts 
for this in part. The student class was accounted the 
highest and a man from practically any walk of life, if 
he could prepare himself and pass the examination, 
became a scholar. This constant interchange between 
the different social groups must have helped to keep 
national life more virile and broader-visioned than it 
could otherwise have been under such a backward¬ 
looking system. 

And have not we of the western world the most im¬ 
pelling incentive to share our best with the East ? Ever 
since the first days of Christianity men have felt the 
push of the missionary command. They have seen the 
need in the people around them, not alone of a higher 
ideal, but also of a dynamic for the struggle toward 
that ideal. They have gone to races with whom they had 
little or no touch and shared the good news with them. 
It is a responsibility that with each generation grows 
not less, but greater. 

Today China is realizing that if she would hold her 
own she must adopt “western” ways, and she is trying 
to do so. Whether for good or evil, we are influencing 
the life of the Orient at countless points. “ Foreign 
custom”—you will hear the phrase again and again! 
The tailor advertises a foreign suit, the barber a foreign 
hair-cut, the restaurant a foreign meal, the druggist 


25 


foreign medicine. Moving picture shows, frequently 
not of the best, represent to interested and observant 
audiences, foreign social life, and books and pictures of 
foreign customs help to guide the progressive young 
people in their desire to follow these new ways. 

Such changes are entering into the spiritual realm, 
also. A student who has a knowledge of modern 
sciences gradually loses his belief in demons of air and 
water and in gods whose attention must be held, during 
prayer, by the striking of a gong; and his first reaction 
is to a materialism that is either atheistic or agnostic. 
The “half gods go.” 

With them go many of the old ethical standards, and 
new ones must take their place; but while this is being 
brought about, it is easy to see that a generation may 
be growing up that has left behind its old ideas of duty 
and of a spirit realm and may be stepping out into a 
materialism that is both pathetic and dangerous. 

We cannot stop the flow of life between the East and 
West—we would not if we could. Each has gifts for 
the other. 

But we must see clearly just what is happening. We 
are sharing with the older nations some of the less de¬ 
sirable elements of our civilization, and we have even 
forced upon them some of our worst curses. Mean¬ 
while, as a result of their contact with our intellectual 
life, their old spirit beliefs are going. Have we any 
choice but to share also with them the thing which is 
deepest and truest in our civilization—a belief in a per¬ 
sonal, living, saving God, whom we know in Jesus 
Christ! 


26 


CHAPTER IV 


“ARE WOMEN PEOPLE?” 

RECENT book on the woman movement, 
bearing as its title the heading of this 
chapter, deals, as such books always do, only 
with the women of the western nations, 
e new woman” appeared as a type some 
twenty-five years ago. If this scathing question may 
still be applied to the emancipated women of the West, 
what of women who are looked upon as “ human, indeed, 
but of a lower state than men”? 

We have studied a little of the life of the conservative 
old-style woman of China. But very recently there is 
a “new-style” woman whose power and influence on 
China’s life are far out of proportion to her number. 

It was once, even in the memory of some missionaries 
still at work in China, very difficult to persuade parents 
to allow their daughters to go to school. Girls did not 
have minds of that kind. They would become spoiled 
and unwomanly; unwilling to do their share of the 
housework; proud and self-willed; and, most fatal 
calamity, they would be unmarriageable! Do not these 
arguments seem to recall the old pleas of western civili¬ 
zation against higher education for women, and even to 
suggest faintly an occasional anti-suffrage argument of 
comparatively recent years? 



27 






But here and there daring and progressive families, 
who had met the missionaries and gained confidence in 
them, made the experiment and it turned out well. The 
education was very practical. Their daughters came 
back to them, useful and happy women; best of all, 
from the economic viewpoint, they were in demand as 
wives. 

China’s deepest respect is reserved for education. 
When parents once realized that they could educate 
their daughters and still marry them off, they were 
eager to give them as much learning as they could. All 
this did not take place in a day. Years of patient, per¬ 
sistent, unrewarded effort against an apparently im¬ 
movable wall of prejudice and opposition were needed 
to bring in the new order. But now it is coming. 

Many of the mission schools have waiting lists, and 
numbers of private and government schools have been 
opened for women throughout China. In the progres¬ 
sive centers of the nation education has proved itself. 

Among students still in school the Young Women’s 
Christian Association has a rich opportunity. Let us 
visit an Association meeting in a girls’ school. The 
girls as they gather seem very young but we soon realize 
that they are fully able to carry the organization. The 
officers preside with dignity and composure, in spite of 
their embarrassment in the presence of foreign guests. 
We learn of work done; voluntary Bible classes; teach¬ 
ing in the street Sunday schools; work among the non- 
Christian girls in the school itself; plans for socials that 
shall include all in a good time. The treasurer reports 
the encouraging results of some money-raising plan by 


28 


which representatives may be sent to the summer 
conference. 

In a talk with the president or teacher or adviser, we 
learn that it does not always run smoothly. The world- 
old problems that crop up wherever people work closely 
together appear here, too. Patience, persistence, loyalty 
and a faith that goes on trusting in spite of difficulties, 
are needed to tide over hard places. 

The responsibility for all this work is largely in the 
hands of the girls and the Chinese teachers. Besides the 
work accomplished, the young women are learning 
lessons of individual initiative and enterprise; of organi¬ 
zation for service; of personal Christian work; of 
thoughtfulness and prayer; and faith that will serve 
them far beyond their school days. 

Soon after we begin our actual Association work 
comes our first China summer conference. As we con¬ 
ference leaders meet together for prayer, before the 
girls arrive, and then bustle about getting ready for their 
speedy reception and assignment, we feel the old con¬ 
ference glow that is like no other feeling. 

Then the girls begin to arrive. They come up from 
the stations in chairs or rickshas, all dark-haired and 
dark-eyed; they are speaking a tongue we have to strain 
our ears to follow; they are younger than our usual 
student conference delegates—few, indeed, are of college 
grade. But all the same, they are “the makings” of a 
typical conference—laughing, shy, awkward, ready to 
giggle among themselves, or to fall into embarrassed 
silence at a question from “the foreigner.” 

Then the conference spirit begins to spread. Little 


29 



’Way Down Upon the Yangtsk River ! ” Stunt-Day at a 
Summer Conference in China 



At a Conference in America They Are a Bit More Demure! 
Chinese Delegation at Geneva 









groups are meeting to talk over their responsibilities. 
The recreation and student government committees plan 
how to make every girl a part of the conference. Dele¬ 
gation leaders meet for earnest council and prayer about 
their own groups, especially about the non-Christian 
girls. Here and there girls are discussing together the 
things that are deepest in their lives. A misunderstand¬ 
ing is made up, and the girls who before would not 
“speak” are seen talking quietly together. 

Meanwhile the classes are going on, technical hours, 
Bible study, the Eight Week Club—how like home it 
all sounds! 

As the conference draws to a close many decisions are 
made, quietly, prayerfully, soberly. It is no easy de¬ 
cision for some of these girls. This one will go back, 
the only Christian in her village. The whole force of 
her family will he arrayed against her. In her new 
stand she will be, humanly speaking, wholly alone, and 
she knows and foresees this when she decides. Yet she 
is quite sure that the God she has seen in the revelation 
Christ has made, is the true God, her loving Father, and 
that she can worship no other. 

As the conference breaks up, we long to trace the lives 
of these girls into their homes and we follow them often 
in our prayers. When the autumn comes, it is with 
great joy that we hear reports of the true and service¬ 
giving lives that many of them have lived during their 
summer days at home. 

A very interesting and natural result that follows 
woman’s education is her economic enfranchisement. 
When girls graduate, many of them are immediately 


31 


offered teaching positions. Some continue their edu¬ 
cation and become trained nurses or doctors. In such 
employment a woman can support herself, and this at 
once changes her social status. 

In the old days there was no alternative to marriage, 
but now, when a father finds that his daughter can 
support herself, he is often quite willing that she shall 
do so. When offers of marriage come, she is given a 
choice. Sometimes a carefully chaperoned meeting is 
arranged between the young people, that they may 
become a little acquainted before the decision is made. 
A Christian girl is not forced to marry a non-Christian 
man, and if she chooses to wait a few years before mar¬ 
riage, she may. Thus there is added to China’s assets 
that invaluable woman, the “old maid”! A few have 
remained unmarried and are doing incalculable service 
in medicine and education and organized Christian 
work. 

Most of them, however, are temporary old maids and 
after a few years of constructive professional service 
they marry and carry their new ideals and standards 
into the making of a Christian home. 

These women are not going to be satisfied to settle 
down into a life of idleness and aimless activity. They 
are eager to use their leisure in something that shall 
call out the vigorous energy and interest in life and 
service that their school years have developed. And 
they usually do. 

It is hard to realize how wide is the freedom of many 
of these younger women. As we were driving with one 
of them in her father’s big car, she turned to us and 


32 


said, “My sister and I have both learned to run the car, 
but we don’t do it often. It makes us conspicuous and 
father doesn’t like it.” 

That a Chinese girl should learn to run an automobile 
is a sign of what is coming, and she and others will be 
running them before long. “American women do so— 
why should not we ? ” Why not, indeed ? 

But this freedom is accompanied by many dangers. 
Too often the girls do not understand the principles 
that regulate our social conduct. The foreign young 
people on Shanghai’s streets are often not the ones 
whose standards one would choose for China’s women. 

The “movies,” so cheap and popular in Shanghai, 
present tawdry and immoral pictures of western social 
life and manners and sex relations. We have heard, 
and fear it may be true, that films condemned by the 
censors in America are sent to the Orient. Reports 
often exaggerated are brought from here about Ameri¬ 
can young people. All these things make it very im¬ 
portant that the principles underlying western social 
relationships shall be made clearer. For until both men 
and women mutually understand each other’s principles 
and ideals, there are grave dangers in their social inter¬ 
course. 

But this freedom, in spite of its dangers, is immensely 
valuable. It has freed women for numberless activities. 
They are ready, as we have seen, to invest their energies, 
but they need leaders and definite tasks, that they may 
know how and where to make the investment. 

Outstanding among the agencies that are trying to 
meet this need is the Young Women’s Christian Asso- 


33 


ciation. Its board and committee members are drawn 
largely from among the Christian professional and mar¬ 
ried women; its Chinese secretaries are from the edu¬ 
cated young women who are free to enter professional 
life. And many others, as we shall see more fully later, 
are finding in Association membership the opportunity 
for a larger life of enjoyment, self-expression, and vital 
Christian service. 


34 


CHAPTER Y 


SHARING AMERICA’S BEST 

FTER the chance we have had to learn some¬ 
thing of the background of Chinese life, we 
are eager to visit the site of our future 
work. On returning from our language 
study, we feel as if we had really come to our own place, 
when we enter a Young Women’s Christian Association 
enclosure. The one to which our first visit is paid is in 
Shanghai, and we find here the national as well as local 
headquarters. 

As we leave the hus}^ street and enter the compound, 
the first thing we see would have been taken as a matter 
of course when we first landed. Now that we know more 
of Chinese life and customs we may view with some 
surprise this tennis court for women. What more 
natural? Ah, but a tennis court for Chinese women— 
to one who knows only old China the thing would be 
unthinkable! Confucius, when walking, always moved 
slowly, with dignity and composure. His followers, who 
desired to be worthy of the name of scholar, did likewise, 
and for women, even more than men, they claimed that 
dignity, modesty and self-respect required calm, delib¬ 
erate motion. Can you not see them, these fine, 
courteous, formal, slow-moving men and women of old 
China? Now try to put them on a tennis court. The 
picture is so incongruous as to be almost indecent. Let 



35 









us apologize for the imaginative indignity we have paid 
them! We feel how impossible it is. 

Ah, but China has changed! Young women who, as 
little girls, went to a school where exercise was a part 
of the daily regime, are not content with this unwhole¬ 
some and tedious “dignity.” They have learned that 
exercise may be fun, and they want it. Moreover, they 
are realizing its value. Thorough good health has been 
very much the exceptional thing in China. Any malady, 
from a mental disease to an aching back or a hurt finger, 
is called a “bing.” And whenever a group of Chinese 
women meet together the conversation will turn, sooner 
or later, to their “bings.” Not so unlike us, you will 
think! No, but there is little conviction that all this 
should be different, and absolutely no scientific knowl¬ 
edge of the rules of healthy living that would eliminate 
so many of these miserable ailments. 

Some school girls and other progressive women, how¬ 
ever, have come to different ideals of bodily health and 
well-being, and they carry those principles into their 
later life. Soon after this tennis court was opened you 
might have seen the president of the Shanghai Associa¬ 
tion playing with a friend and her two big daughters, 
while her small son ran after the balls. She has found 
exercise, health and vigor to be so closely related that 
she is unwilling to forego her tennis or physical class. 

Beyond this tennis court is the gymnasium. Since 
we are especially observing national work today, we are 
glad to see that the class from the Normal Training 
School for Physical Education is on the floor. This 
school is a dream come true. Some years ago it became 


36 


very evident that trained physical directors were imme¬ 
diately and urgently needed in China. The mission 
schools offered physical work, but they felt the need of 
trained leadership. The private and government schools 
for girls were coming to realize that they, too, must add 
physical training to their curricula. But where were 
the teachers to come from ? It had been very difficult to 
find physical directors to fill any positions in foreign 
countries, and it would always be impossible to find 
enough to fill all the openings. 

The Young Women’s Christian Association decided, 
after consultation with many Chinese and foreign men 
and women, that an invaluable contribution to China 
would be a Normal Training School for physical di¬ 
rectors. It was a good many years before the dream 
was realized. But in June, 1916, a class of six received 
certificates, and in 1916-1917 the school rose to sixteen. 
Already members of last year’s class are proving the 
value of their training by the fine spirit they are putting 
into the physical classes in the schools where they are 
teaching. 

Here in America we take much for granted our knowl¬ 
edge of right living and of personal and household 
hygiene. We know that fresh air and exercise are de¬ 
sirable, that contagion is possible and flies are dangerous. 
But in China we could not assume these things, and it 
would be hard to estimate the value to an increasing 
number of Chinese women of vigorous physical training 
and a new set of hygienic convictions, coupled with a 
Christian conception of the body as a temple of the 
living God. 


37 


Some of these thoughts have been passing through 
our minds as we watch this class of potential physical 
directors at its work. If we had visited them in the 
fall, when they first came in, we would be doubly im¬ 
pressed with their quick response and good form today. 
Now they are being dismissed and a noise at the gate 
calls two of them away, for children from a near-by 
“free school” have come to use the playground for 
supervised recreation and exercise under the direction 
of two of the normal students. We are tempted to spend 
the rest of our time watching the cunning, solemn-eyed 
little tads, gravely trying to correlate teacher’s orders 
with their pudgy little hands or feet. But w T e still have 
before us a visit to the national offices. 

We must forget our conceptions of business offices at 
home or we shall be disappointed, for these offices are 
neither large nor elegant. You who sit before a 
mahogany desk in a steam-heated office with patent ven¬ 
tilation, must picture China’s national secretary pausing 
on a chilly winter morning in her dictation of a letter 
to the World’s Committee in London, to put coal into 
the tiny stove beside her. Shortly, as the stove ap¬ 
proaches the red-hot stage, she will pause again to open 
a window, and before the room is fairly cool the fire has 
gone out! A sweater hangs near at hand ready to slip 
on, for the halls and outer offices are cold, just a chilly 
shade colder than outdoors. The secretaries who w T ork 
there keep their sweaters on, and those with cold hands 
wear woolen mitts, as do their Chinese co-workers. 

The offices are thoroughly alive, however. A dicta¬ 
phone, a mimeograph, a telephone and typewriters look 


38 




What the Normal School Can Turn Out! They Represent Us in China! 

“They Have Learned That Exercise Harriet Boutelle, Abbie Mayhew (Head of Normal 

May Be Fun and They Want It.” School of Physical Education), Grace Coppock 

So They Get It (National General Secretary), Jane Ward, 

and Helen Crane (now in America) 

















like home. A Chinese writer, working on a pile of in¬ 
scrutable manuscript, brings us back to China, and a 
joyous cry of “Home mail!” from a secretary, before a 
full letter-box, makes us feel that both sides of the world 
are alike. 

The thought of all this mail fires our imaginations. 
The magazines and newspapers, Christmas boxes, nice, 
fat home letters, bills unwanted, and checks eagerly 
watched for, and (to judge from the change of name 
and occupation by a secretary every now and then) 
love-letters, too, come in through these rooms, and leave 
a vital feeling behind them. 

We learn that the national funds are administered 
here. The office secretary takes occasion to urge upon 
us the necessity of reports, and we resolve that we will 
do better and try more conscientiously to get across to 
our fellow workers at home something of the living and 
thrilling interest of this wonderful land where it is our 
privilege to work. 

We visit the national secretary in her office. As we 
see on her wall a map of China, great China, a feeling 
comes over us of the disproportionateness of our limited 
group of workers to the need presented there. We see 
China, ready, eager, waiting, looking to the West for 
help in this her day of readjustment. We picture 
China’s women with whom the Young Women’s Chris¬ 
tian Association is called to work, as they are meeting 
so courageously their new problems and striving so 
eagerly toward new ideals. And we breathe a prayer 
that the day of a more adequate response may come 
while these opportunities are still ours. 


40 


But our attention turns quickly to what has been 
done! We have already visited a student Association 
and a summer conference, and now the student secre¬ 
tary (there has never been more than one at a time for 
all of China) tells us that there are more than fifty 
student Associations, and that many more could be 
organized if a worker could go and help them start. 

We hear, too, of the summer conference plans, and 
realize that conferences are having to be given up this 
year, not for lack of students or openings, but because 
even with the willing help of the denominational mis¬ 
sionaries we haven’t enough secretaries to carry the 
responsibility. 

We are shown, too, the locations of the City Young 
Women’s Christian Associations, and, more impressive 
still, the places that have formally asked for the opening 
of Association work. Some of these places have been 
calling for organizations for years, but there has been 
nobody to send, and they are waiting yet. 

We have a chance to discuss with the national secre¬ 
taries, and members of the National Committee, both 
Chinese and foreign, the ideals of Association work in 
China, and we feel the togetherness of our service in a 
new way. 

Before leaving, we talk of the problems facing us all 
and we realize that the heaviest burdens of the work in 
China fall on those who are trying to adjust the inade¬ 
quate supply of workers to the challenge that China’s 
women are making to the Christian womanhood of today. 

We feel, too, that yet heavier burdens are falling upon 
the shoulders of those who carry responsibility at the 


41 


home end, for meeting this increasing need for workers 
and support. 

But as we see what has been done and what is being 
planned, we are very deeply thankful for those w T ho in 
splendid faith and consecration are accepting the burden 
of this challenge and presenting it to those who might 
meet it. We feel ourselves in a new way fellow workers 
with them, and with those, too, who by their gifts make 
an added worker possible; with those who are privileged 
to choose this far-away land as their place of service; 
and with those who make the largest sacrifice in willingly 
sharing a beloved daughter or friend with the responsive 
and eager womanhood of China. 


42 


CHAPTER VI 


THE CHINESE VERSION OF A 
CITY Y. W. C. A. 

FTER our visit to national headquarters we 
are more eager than ever to see the activities 
of a city Association, for that, as it happens, 
is to be our field of work. 

Today we are fortunate in finding a board meeting 
in progress, so it is an interesting group of Chinese 
women. Ten of a board of fourteen are present, and 
we feel, as the president opens the meeting with prayer 
and each refers to the agenda she holds in her hand, 
that they are there for business. The plans and prob¬ 
lems of the coming month are taken up; the social 
committee asks for co-operation in a special series of 
“good times”; physical classes are arranged for; a 
teacher for the Chinese cooking class is being sought, 
and suggestions are made of possible teachers. The 
religious work committee outlines a course on personal 
evangelism and some careful, prayerful planning is done 
to make the meetings as vital and effective as possible. 

Perhaps the budget is presented; and a spirit of con¬ 
secrated conviction is splendidly shown in the under¬ 
taking of a finance campaign. For Chinese women to 
ask for large sums of money is a very new and difficult 



43 







thing, yet all the local expenses of the Association are 
met by these women and they face it very finely and do 
the hard thing, because they believe so fully that it is 
worth doing. 

Working with this board is a small staff of secretaries. 
We are told (and it sounds like a sum in arithmetic that 
has come out wrong) that there are one and one-half 
foreign, and three half Chinese secretaries! We find 
that one of the foreign secretaries is still at half-time 
language study, and that each of the three Chinese sec¬ 
retaries, for one or another reason, is giving only half¬ 
time. We are quickly conscious of the new set of prob¬ 
lems that such an arrangement must bring, and heartily 
sympathize with the one full-time secretary, as she hopes 
for some more “whole ones” before long! 

Later a visit to a staff meeting helps us to understand 
the work even more fully. We find it much like a staff 
meeting at home, the work of the whole group gaining 
by the ideas and points of view of each individual. 
There are, of course, no national distinctions, all are 
fellow workers and share together the responsibility of 
the whole. 

Here we feel again the pressure of increasing oppor¬ 
tunity. A private school wants Bible teachers. A group 
of young, eager girls have asked for a cooking class; 
there are many members who should be called on and 
more socials and lectures to be planned; the educational 
work needs revising and enlarging; and there is need 
of more intensive work in organizing the Christian 
Association members into a sense of their responsibility 
to the non-Christians. 


44 


The books must be audited soon and we fear someone 
is going to work nights on that! The staff is asked to 
send two representatives to serve on the film-censoring 
board, a member to act on a city evangelism committee 
and another to help evolve a plan for relating former 
students to the Christian church. 

The pressure is great, and all are convinced that God 
must guide in the choices and decisions, so that the work 
may be carried on with common sense, buoyancy, and 
physical and spiritual health and growth. The staff 
separates with a deepening desire for a fuller life in 
Christ, that our service may more wholly express Him. 

We have yet to see the Association actually at work. 
In the gymnasium a party is in progress. Pew of us in 
our busy American lives ever experience real and pro¬ 
tracted monotony. Unless we have known it, or can 
imagine it, we cannot realize all that a time of lively, 
interesting social intercourse means to many of these 
women. How they enter into it! Games and charades, 
into which the Chinese girls throw themselves with de¬ 
lightful results; story telling; moving pictures; all of 
these bring keen pleasure and larger life and interest 
into many dull lives. 

There are lectures, too, on all sorts of subjects. 
Wide interest is shown in a series of health talks; the 
care of food in summer; the nourishing of babies (oh, 
the vast ignorance of China on that subject alone!) ; a 
talk illustrated by moving-picture films on flies and 
mosquitoes; and another on tuberculosis. A baby¬ 
saving show has given simple principles of infant wel¬ 
fare to many mothers. Speakers have also presented 


45 



They Are Giving a Play Called “Swat the Fly! ” 
Who Says China is Not Up-to-date! 



Learning in the Concrete What “Inasmuch” Means. 
Distributing Clothing to the Poor 













informally the principles underlying western etiquette 
and social customs—a subject upon which young 
Chinese women, and men too, sorely need enlightenment. 

After these lectures a social hour usually follows, and 
here we all have opportunity to get acquainted with 
each other, when the Association’s Christian ideals can 
be more fully explained, and an invitation extended to 
visit a Bible class or the Sunday meetings. 

We must not fail to see the school. We learn that it 
meets for live days a week for the afternoon session 
only, and is planned especially for married women or 
others who, for some reason, are unable to undertake 
a course of study in a regular institution. 

Shall we stand and w T atch the advanced class for a 
few minutes ? Their smoothly dressed hair, and prettily 
cut garments of soft, lovely fabrics, their keen respon¬ 
sive faces, and ready smiles of appreciation, their pretty, 
hesitating reading of an English passage and their 
intelligent answers to the teacher’s questions—all these 
things together leave with us a vivid impression we shall 
not soon forget. And when some little amusing happen¬ 
ing occurs, their immediate appreciative enjoyment of 
the joke proves once more what we had already realized, 
that we and they are just folks together, fully able to 
understand each other. 

We find here a number of married women who want 
to enlarge their outlook on life. Their husbands are 
educated, their children are being educated, and it will 
mean much to the family life that the mother, too, has 
gained even a small understanding of this world in 
which the rest live. 


47 


Not all are married, but nearly all are unable to enter 
an all-day school. Some of them belong to families of 
considerable influence and most of them know nothing 
of Christianity on entering the school. But by Bible 
teaching for the whole school, and by voluntary classes 
for those who are ready to study more thoroughly, they 
are coming to understand what it means. From time 
to time we have the joy of knowing that one of these 
women has realized the truth of these teachings, and in 
baptism and church membership has openly acknowl¬ 
edged Christ as her master and guide. 

But though we should like to, we cannot linger too 
long in the school. We want to visit the other educa¬ 
tional classes, the ones that meet weekly. If the cooking 
class is going on you will hear the hum of voices before 
reaching the room. They are clustered around the long 
table, each holding the latest leaf to be added to her 
notebook, the recipe already written on it in English 
and Chinese. If you are not a member you will be wise 
to drop in just as the dish of the day is finished, and you 
will surely be invited to test its success. 

Sounds of laughter and applause draw us to the 
gymnasium, where a physical class is in progress. We 
are told that the drill is over and the games have begun. 
Every one is doing her level best. They are learning 
lessons both of team spirit and deep breathing, fair play 
and healthy exercise, as they take their share together 
in these drills and games. 

Later we accept with pleasure the invitation of the 
American teacher of the class in infants’ clothing, to 
come to her home for a special meeting. She has been 


48 


teaching a group, made up largely of young married 
women, how babies should be dressed and cared for. 
The regular meetings are in the Association, but today 
in her own home she is showing these young women, 
who are now more her friends than her pupils, how she 
bathes and dresses and cares for her own baby boy. 

They are learning more than about baby clothes, these 
Chinese women, as they visit this home and see before 
them Christian ideals of discipline, friendliness and 
loving family relationships. Each week during a part 
of the year the class members are invited to remain with 
the teacher for an hour of Bible study and discussion, 
and the understanding and friendship already estab¬ 
lished makes the discussion of deeper problems very 
easy and natural. 

We visit other Bible classes, too. Here a little group 
of girl students are reading Mark. Some are still seek¬ 
ing with puzzled eyes to understand what it means, and 
why it means so much. Two in the class—and you could 
tell them by a difference in expression and response— 
have become Christians. They can explain to their 
friends as we cannot, about this God of love who has 
displaced for them the countless demons, good and evil, 
of a former belief. 

A very different group meets in a near-by room. It 
is composed of women servants who, by slow, laborious 
steps, are learning to read, “God is love.” Here too, 
however, we think we can distinguish the faces of those 
to whom this truth is a reality, delivering them from 
the power of sin and fear. 

After the class as we sit with one of the Chinese 


49 


secretaries for tea, she tells us stories that make our 
hearts glow, of individuals who have changed, of whole 
families that have found a new and better life through 
knowing and accepting the power of God’s love. 

We leave the Association very grateful that we are 
privileged to serve the Great God in this wonderful land. 


50 


CHAPTER VII 


WAITING 

OME of us remember prayer meetings of our 
younger days when the deacon, or a Sunday 
school teacher who felt a special interest in 
missions, would pray, oh, so earnestly, that 
s of China might be opened to Christian 
workers.’’ Today you hear that prayer no longer. 
Open ? Why, the doors are wide open! The tragedy 
is, that through the broad arch of these wide-open doors 
so slender a line of Christian workers is trickling. 
Compared to former days the number is large, but 
compared to the work to be done, and the responsibility 
we Christians have toward it, the number is pitifully 
inadequate. 

Just now in China there is a rare opportunity. This 
great land is realizing her need of new force and vigor 
if she is to take her place among the nations of the world. 

She, who has always looked down upon war, and 
classed fighting as the least noble of occupations, is 
feeling, alas, that she must acquire an army and a navy. 
She is also eager to adopt western methods in commerce, 
in engineering, in education, even in social customs. 
She is willing, today, to try out whatever is offered her 
from the West. 

Many of China’s leaders see, too, that her ancient 
religious beliefs are going. They deplore the develop- 



51 







ment of a wholly material civilization. Christianity is 
being given a rare opportunity to present its claims and 
to prove itself a religion adequate to save China’s man¬ 
hood and womanhood. To every form of Christian 
work, new doors are opening almost daily. 

We in the Young Women’s Christian Associations 
are feeling the pressure keenly. 

In a progressive interior city some of the Chinese 
women, with the help of an American missionary, have 
organized a Social Service League. They have con¬ 
ducted illustrated lectures on tuberculosis in several sec¬ 
tions of the city. They have arranged for stations for 
the distribution of properly prepared milk for babies. 
They are taking a very real interest in their city and 
feeling a new sense of personal responsibility. 

The national secretary of the Young Women’s Chris¬ 
tian Association came to that city and an American mis¬ 
sionary asked some of these women to meet her. 1 1 But, ’ ’ 
she said, “don’t say anything to them about the Young 
Women’s Christian Association unless you are ready to 
send us secretaries and begin work soon. For if they 
hear of it they will realize that it is exactly what they 
want, and it will be exceedingly difficult to keep them 
from organizing.” The secretary knew^ that it would 
not be possible to send anyone at once, and was most 
careful not to mention the Association during her after¬ 
noon. This was several years ago, and only this year 
has the first secretary been appointed to that city. 

More recently the national secretary was visiting in 
another large city. Here an Association is already or¬ 
ganized. While she and the Chinese woman who is 


52 


president were looking at land with a view to purchasing 
for a new building, the president told her that she had 
received a letter from Chinese friends in a near-by city 
asking that she come and help them organize a Young 
Women’s Christian Association. 

The secretary felt her heart sink at the news. It is 
possible for a group of Chinese women, enthusiastic, 
eager, and with some slight knowledge of the Young 
Women’s Christian Association, to organize independ¬ 
ently. But they cannot know thoroughly the Association 
policies. They have not had executive experience. They 
have no trained leader to keep the routine work going, 
and carry the plans on day after day. Very often the 
work becomes one-sided, emphasizing one kind of Asso¬ 
ciation activity but ignoring others; and there is danger 
that, in the pressure of the immediate physical and social 
needs of the women around, they may after a time lose 
sight of the central purpose, the spiritual ideals and 
Christian aim of the Association. Discouragements 
arise, the work lags, the membership loses confidence and 
interest—and the Young Women’s Christian Association 
has lost ground that it will take years to recover. And 
yet when the women are ready to organize, to take the 
responsibility and carry the budget, it is disastrous to 
ask them to wait year after year! 

These thoughts, to return to our specific case, were 
passing through the secretary’s mind. She felt that she 
must meet these women at once, so she and the president 
traveled there that same day. Three were invited to 
come and talk over the plans. But five came, and it was 
clear from the eager interest on their faces that they had 


53 


come with the expectation that the hoped-for day had 
arrived, and that the Association they so wanted would 
soon be a reality. They were women of fine Christian 
character, of ability, training and education, and with 
financial and social power. It was clear that what they 
undertook they would be able to carry on. 

First they were given an opportunity to explain their 
ideals for an Association. It was fine to see how broad 
and well thought out and Christian they were. When 
they told of their many non-Christian friends who had 
never been in a church but who they felt sure would 
respond to an invitation to join an English or a cooking 
class, and who could then be drawn into the Bible 
classes and later into the church, and then asked whether 
the Association did not provide such classes, and whether 
it was not legitimate to expect that such an organization 
should provide a natural entrance into the church, any¬ 
one knowing the purpose of the Young Women’s Chris¬ 
tian Association and its right relation to the church 
could not but see here a splendid opportunity for service. 

Then the secretary explained to them the policy of 
the China National Committee, that an Association can 
be organized only when there is at least one trained 
person to give her full time to it. They readily saw the 
value of such an arrangement and asked what they must 
do, in order that such a person be sent to them. They 
were then told that the Association enters a city only 
upon the formal request of the mission bodies, as well 
as of the Chinese Christian women of that place. The 
secretary also suggested that the request should repre¬ 
sent the desire of a large number of Chinese women, and 


54 




Here, too. Patriotism Will Overdo Itself China’s Future 













asked that they present it quietly to their friends and 
see if there really was a desire for it. 

They were ready and eager to carry these formalities 
through, and felt there would be no difficulty. They 
would have the formal request sent to the China Na¬ 
tional Committee very shortly, and then when might 
they expect their leader? 

Is it any wonder that the secretary had not the cour¬ 
age to tell them that some cities had waited years, one 
city seven years after the request was in, before a sec¬ 
retary could be sent ? 

Instead, the leaders of Young Women’s Christian 
Association work in China conferred together and deter¬ 
mined that the call of these women, and others like 
them, should be brought before Christian women in more 
privileged countries. They have had the faith to believe 
that this call will not go unanswered. 

There are now nine cities in China that have formally 
applied for organization. That means that a request 
has come in to the China National Committee from the 
women of the mission boards and the Chinese Christian 
women of each city. It means that they are ready to 
undertake the responsibility of the Association, to serve 
on the hoard, and to give time and effort to planning its 
policy and raising the money necessary for the local 
budget. 

Some will say that this period of war is not a time in 
which to put special effort into foreign work. But what 
is foreign work? And what lands are foreign? Who 
is our neighbor? In thinking of the world as God’s 
world, and of ourselves as world citizens, we find no 


56 


room today for divisions into “home” and “foreign.” 
We are finding, too, that in Oriental lands conditions are 
changing and such emergencies are arising because of 
the war, as to create a very special need for increased 
Christian activity. God forbid that we take money and 
effort that should belong to this work of His for which 
we are responsible, and use it to pay for our own war! 
Should we not rather, as faithful stewards of that Chris¬ 
tian work, boldly plan to take advantage of the long 
awaited opportunities that have come, and pay for the 
war demands in extra personal self-denial and sacrifice ® 
In these days of bitterness and separation, we hardly 
know how to think—we feel ourselves groping in dark¬ 
ness. But as we remember our world fellowship as 
children of God, our bond with all women, not in China 
alone, but in countries the world around, we lift our 
hearts to God in thankfulness that we may, by our world 
service, express our conviction that He is yet the God 
and Father of all the human family and that we who 
know and love Him will find out His will and go out to 
serve His children—our sisters—whithersoever He leads. 


57 


World Fellowship! 


f I ’HE following books and leaflets will be found help- 
fu .1 in making World Fellowship real in your Associ¬ 
ation. Why not include them in your list for reference 
and group study during the spring of 1918 ? 

Our Field is the World 

By Esther Anderson. A little book of helpful 
technical suggestions for a foreign department of a 
city Association. Paper, 15 cents. 

Overtaking the Centuries 

By A. Estelle Paddock. Valuable historical infor¬ 
mation as to how the Young Women’s Christian 
Association has met some of the needs of women 
in Oriental lands. Paper, 40 cents; cloth, 60 cents. 

World Fellowship 

By Margaret E. Burton. Especially written for stu¬ 
dent Associations, but equally good for any person 
who wishes to be a world citizen. Paper, 10 cents. 


THE WOMANS PRESS 

The reorganized Publication Department of the National 
Board, Young Womens Christian Associations 

600 LEXINGTON AVENUE NEW YORK CITY 








World Fellowship! 


Comrades in Service 

By Margaret E. Burton. Vivid stories of a few 
great people, of different nations, who used well the 
gift of life. Paper, 40 cents; cloth, 60 cents. 

Japan Today 

By Ruth N. Emerson. Six short illustrated chap¬ 
ters of girl life in Japan. Paper, 25 cents. 

The Girls’ Year Book 

A book of the broadest interest, stressing in the 
third division of Part 1, “ I Have Sent Them,” by 
Helen M. A. Taylor. The story of the beginning 
of missionary work. The book in cloth is 50 cents. 

Postage must be added to all orders. 

The Association Monthly 

Hereafter the Monthly will have much material of 
international interest. Subscription $1.00. Foreign 
rate, 40 cents extra. 


THE WOMANS PRESS 


The reorganized Publication Department of the National 
Board, Young Womens Christian Associations 


600 LEXINGTON AVENUE NEW YORK CITY 





















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